Stone Cold Truths

Join Emergency Nurse Practitioner & Polar Medicine faculty member Ben Cooper and Dr Sean Hudson MBE alongside WEM Trauma Lead Eoin Walker as they discuss the medical issues common with cold and polar environments. Sean and Ben bring decades of Extreme Medicine experience working close to home as part of England’s Mountain Rescue Teams and across the world from the Himalayas to the South Pole.

___

“We imagine that people are out skiing and climbing when actually the majority of people that get caught out in these really cold environments is simply because their vehicle breaks down, or they have another concurrent illness, or they’re drunk” – Sean Hudson

___

The trio discuss environmental factors and medical predisposing factors such as endocrine dysfunctions, neuropathy and psychiatric diseases. Ben and Sean also examine how to best manage these factors on expeditions where hypothermia is a significant threat.

Sean and Ben also talk about cold water immersion, frostnip/bite and how to manage it. They account for what they have learnt through their personal experiences from a self-care perspective.

With well over a decade working together Ben and Sean have forged a great friendship leading to a session that is funny as it is informative. Give this session a watch for some great insight and a couple of laughs!

If your keen to know more about cold environments and Polar Medicine you can join the WEM team in Finse, Norway. You’ll learn from world-class guides and polar medicine, and you’ll spend the week with like-minded extreme medics eager for adventure. Finse is famous for being the training ground of some of history’s most famous explorers such as Roald Amundsen, Captain Robert Scott and Sir Ernest Shackleton. To this day Finse is known as a proving ground among aspiring polar travellers.

Keep your eye’s peeled for ‘Stone Cold Truths – Part 2’ being recorded and released in February 2021.